Given their portable nature and ease of use, wireless handsets (such as cellular phones) have enjoyed wide proliferation. This is especially the case among users who move around frequently, but wish to stay in contact with their work colleagues, families and other individuals or entities of importance.
Often, however, coverage problems arise when a user attempts to use a handset inside of a building. For example, many electromagnetic signals (such as radio frequencies used by Wi-Fi devices and cellphones) are unable to fully propagate through walls, metalized glass or other common building materials which separate the inside of a building from an outside environment. As a result, the user may experience a degradation of service or may be precluded entirely from sending or receiving information from their handset to an existing outside network.
Additionally, many wireless handset users also have other communication devices, such as “soft phones” using voice over IP (VoIP) protocols, as well as analog phones communicating over POTS (plain old telephone system) lines for both business and personal use. Thus a single user may be associated with several different telephone numbers receive calls over a variety of different transmission mediums.